Published by
Melbourne House
Developed by
Beam Software Pty., Ltd.
Also For
Amstrad CPC, Apple II, BBC Micro, Macintosh, MSX, Oric, PC Booter, ZX Spectrum
Released
1983

Setting
Fantasy
Pacing
Real-time
Misc
Licensed
Interface
Text parser
Genre
Adventure
Perspective
1st-person
Visual
Fixed / flip-screen
Gameplay
Interactive fiction / text adventure

Description

Relive Tolkien's The Hobbit as Bilbo Baggins. A piece of Interactive fiction (with graphics to illustrate locations), you follow the plot of Tolkien's book (before the Lord of the Rings trilogy), starting with an encounter with Gandalf and Thorin. The other characters can make their own moves independently of the player and their actions can sometimes result in a situation where it is not possible to complete the game. Every character and object in the game has a calculated mass which affects how they can be manipulated by the player.

The implementation is rich enough that you can play entirely without pictures if you wish. Also, gameplay happens in realtime, uncommon for interactive fiction. The game's parser, called Inglish took as long to develop as the rest of the game. In contrast to other text-based games of the period which were based on simple verb-noun parsers, Inglish allowed for complete sentences to be entered.

From Mobygames.com. Original Entry